Hello my pumpkin spice baddies! Have you heard of mushroom foraging? Courtesy: Reddit
Boulder's OG himbo. Courtesy: NBC
It is mathematically and scientifically impossible to hate on Boulder when the aspen leaves are turning. Credit: Karen Daugherty, National Park Service
Whole Foods Daddy, known to civilians as Gabby Vermeire, is Caribou Current’s resident advice columnist. Each quarter, she’ll be bringing you a guide to the season, while answering your thorniest (and horniest) Boulder-related questions without respecting your boundaries.
Hot take: Fall is so Boulder-coded. Maybe it’s because fall is Chris Stapleton season for me, and Chris Stapleton looks like the coolest dude at the Gold Hill general store who’d share his J with you out back and make fun of the cyclists taking themselves super seriously. Maybe it’s because fall is yearning, for summer and the seasonal wildland firefighter who peaced out at the end of it, and Boulder is also eternally yearning for an imagined past where it was real and weed was natty and rent was cheap. No, wait, I’ve got it: Boulder and fall go together like cute little kids in Halloween costumes and yours truly (after turning 30 changed my hormones) because, when it’s gold with aspens, Boulder Canyon momentarily achieves a level of beauty that makes it the gravitational center of the universe. Yes, that’s definitely it.
My avoidant ex just hit me up after 5 years. Is it cuffing season already?
It’s been a weird summer and fall for the timing of things: early peaches, abbreviated tubing season, the usual two weeks of hot-as-balls temperatures extending indefinitely, fire season being, like, all the time. If the bears can be excused for coming down early to party since there’s no vegetation in the high country, then your ex can be excused for an earlier-than-expected, “Hey bud, I was just making peach cobbler today and it made me think of that thing we used to do with ice cream after it got all melty and we were little tipsy :) Anyways, how’ve you been?” text.
Also, are you positive she’s tryna smash? Maybe she really did want the HBO password to watch Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God or actually needs that Le Creuset dutch oven back, because even more than cuffing season, it is braising season, my bitch.
Best PIE?
Pumpkin pie but use kabocha squash instead of pumpkin. Kabocha is the one with the green skin and orange flesh, and you’re correct, there’re no jokes here. Adding cardamom makes you grown.
Now that I have fulfilled my required plug for the kabocha squash lobby, I will say the best pie is sometimes a frozen gluten-free Raised-brand Dutch Apple pie from Whole Foods that’s been half-thawed in your car, consumed with your hands in the driver’s seat after a long hike.
How do we save YA YA Farm & Orchard from CU students?
Ah yes, “save,” i.e. yuppie for “gatekeep.” YA YA has fallen. Gold Hill, YA YA, and everything else that a Boulderite feels ownership over haven’t been IYKYK for a while. The good news is that the CU Zoomers/ gen Alphas will discard YA YA in no time at all like the rest of their trends. However, you can hasten this process by associating YA YA with the cringe of other recent trends. Take pictures with the goats while inexplicably saying “67!” and watch a group of sorority girls trip over their Hokas trying to get away from you. Hide a Labubu or whatever in the apple bins. More apples for you! Are you proud of yourself, chopped unc?
What’s the new Boulder fall tradition that the basic girlies don’t know about?
Greetings basic girlies, uh, I mean, hey queen! What I’m going to say next is super boringgg, skip ahead a paragraph and then continue reading for some straight tea!
Psst, non-basic bitches! My freaky, clever goblins that would never bring a wide-brimmed hat into the sanctuary that is aspen peeping in Ned:, I have a new tradition for you. You’re going to make a haunted house and bring your friends through, and it’s going to be sooo scary. That’s right, we’re going to hold our friends accountable and to higher standards. Literally so spooky. There’s the “Room of Integrity” where you tell them no, stealing isn’t cute anymore, yes from even Whole Foods, and yes, weighing your 3+ pounds of shiitake mushrooms as russet potatoes also counts. Next they’ll experience the “Staircase of Wellness” where you’ll tell them that you can’t actually smoke an infinite amount of weed, and the only reason we don’t know the health consequences is because no federally funded studies on weed’s benefits also means no studies on its risks. Yikes! We love you and know you can do better.
Oh hello again my pumpkin spice baddies! Have you heard of mushroom foraging?
Should I stay with my bouldering daddy or focus on witchcraft this fall?
If this is your first fall with a bouldering daddy, I hate to be the one to inform you that the granite is about to get real sticky and he is about to get real not around. That is to say, you don’t have to choose. While he’s brushing chalk off a slope-y hold on Flagstaff Mountain, you can brush the dust off that chalice you haven’t used and, I don’t know, cast some spells for blue-wave midterms?
The costume: Bixby Elementary Kid (Waldorf Kid)
The accessories: Wolf cut mullet, $465 lunchbox from Canoe Club, pale skin from iron deficiency.
The bit: Take the opportunity to act like you have behavioral issues and then tell anyone who tells you to chill out they’re stunting your development.
The costume: Sexy Boulder County Open Space and Mountain Parks Ranger
The accessories: It’s just a normal OSMP uniform, because they’re already, you know…
The bit: Cite people in slutty Halloween costumes for indecent exposure, ticket every climber at the party for raptor closure violation, start doing interpretive naturalist talks about the house plants.
The costume: Bear in Hyperphagia (Climate Change Summer 2026 edition!)
The accessories: Expired Honey Mama’s chocolate from the Lucky’s NoBo dumpster, crowbar to break into Subarus for protein bars, and a fat lil’ ass.
The bit: This would be great as a couple’s costume with the sexy OSMP ranger. “Hmm, someone seems a little food conditioned! Does daddy need to euthanize relocate you to an area with less human-bear interactions?”
The costume: Robert Redford in his Boulder era
The accessories: A Sink employee t-shirt, a robust and healthy tan from getting high by the creek, me (how much do you resemble Robert Redford at midnight at a dimly-lit Halloween party?)
The bit: Maybe make some Sundance ’27 jokes, but you don’t have to do much; Bob Redford wasn’t really known for his stellar acting abilities, and that’s okay! He was a babe and wanted to conserve our wild places, and that’s way more important.
